


A bright light at the back of his eyes

by lindenwaverly



Category: DCU, Green Lantern (Comics)
Genre: Drug Addiction, M/M, Particularly for valium, Seriously this is very very triggery if you've ever had a drug addiction, Vague mentions of sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-06-25
Packaged: 2018-02-06 05:51:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1846786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindenwaverly/pseuds/lindenwaverly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In between interstellar gigs, Hal drifts. The drifting always starts out hopeful – he’ll plan a few stops on a road trip, sites of historical interest, maybe even give Kyle a lift to some out of the way art retreat and meander back along the forgotten tracks – and ends up like this. A motel room that could be his or could be a stranger’s – they all look the same – a valium-and-coffee hangover and an endless backlog of calls from “concerned friends,” of which there will always be one less than last time.</p><p>HUGE TRIGGER WARNING: This fic is entirely about addiction and features descriptions of a panic attack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A bright light at the back of his eyes

In between interstellar gigs, Hal drifts. The drifting always starts out hopeful – he’ll plan a few stops on a road trip, sites of historical interest, maybe even give Kyle a lift to some out of the way art retreat and meander back along the forgotten tracks – and ends up like this. A motel room that could be his or could be a stranger’s – they all look the same – a valium-and-coffee hangover and an endless backlog of calls from “concerned friends,” of which there will always be one less than last time.

Except this time. This time when he wakes up to the cast-off sounds of the highway, there’s ice water and asprin on the nightstand, and the rest of the bed is cold.  

“You fucking idiot.”

And Guy Gardner, still half dozing in the almost-orange armchair with a blossoming black eye.

“And hello to you too, Guy. Why the fuck are you here?”

“Why the fuck am I here? Why the fuck are you out in the middle of the desert popping pills you ain’t been prescribed?”

He swallows the snarl on his face, because fighting with Guy is all good fun at the right time but his head is splitting in two and he doesn’t have the energy. “You know why I value my time on earth? There’s a little less quality time with you.”

“Apparently you value your time on earth because it gives you an excuse to turn into a giant fuck up.”

He drinks the water down in one long swallow, trying to cool all the things he wants to scream at Guy burning up his throat. It doesn’t work.

“You don’t know shit, Gardner.”

To his surprise, he doesn’t flip. He just shuts his eyes, and when he talks again he sounds tired. “I don’t know shit.”

“Are you a fucking parrot today? Thank you for the asprin, get out of my motel room.”

“I. I don’t know shit.”

“Jesus Christ, Gardner, are you trying to freak me out?”

“I don’t know shit about addiction.”

Oh, yeah. Oh fuck. His dad. He rubs his forehead (He’s sweating, which he didn’t realise was happening). “Ah, fuck. I’m sorry.”

Guy stands up, rubbing his back. “Come on. Put your pants on.”

“What’s happening?”

“I already paid your bill. You’re coming with me. We’re going home.”

He laughs – because what does Guy even mean when he says home?  But he pulls himself up anyway and starts searching for his clothes.

*

They’re driving to – wherever. He hasn’t asked why they’re driving, or how Guy found him, or why Guy found him, because his knuckles are very white against the steering wheel and he knows better than to make Guy mad when he’s trying to concentrate.

“I’m not addicted,” he says, just after passing through Flagstaff, Arizona.

Guy just hits the radio.

They drive in silence for hours. The sky goes red and then dark and then the moon comes up and still Guy doesn’t talk. The radio hums away in the background, switching between local stations as they drive. Some conservative call-in fuzzes and gives way to something country, then again to a station in what sounds like Spanish, though by that point he’s too tired to tell, and finally on a long stretch of desert road it fades out entirely and the car is just filled with the soft crackle of static. No one adjusts the radio.

It’s 3 a:m when the neon sign for the Lucky Palm Motel appears on the horizon like a low hanging star. Guy turns into the car park and stops the car. The radio falls silent, and suddenly all he can hear is how loud his breathing sounds.

“Hal.”

“Guy.”

“You need help.”

“No I don’t, ok? I might be a hot mess when I’m done here, but as soon as I’m up there I’m off them, no problem, no cold turkey, so thanks for the bill paying and the lift to who-the-fuck-knows – “

“Fuck it, Jordan, would you shut up?” His voice is hoarse and loose, a strangled growl. “I know what you’re saying and you can’t even hear it.”

“What am I saying?”

“That you only need to be high when you’re not being shot at.”

“I don’t “need” to be high. I just like it – “

“Look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t take a Valium when I stopped for a piss.”

He’s Hal Jordan. He should be able to look Guy in the eye and brazen it out. Except he can’t.

He rests his head against the dashboard and when he looks up Guy is watching him more gently than he’s ever seen him look at anyone before.

“Fuck it Gardner,” he says, but he’s almost whispering, he hasn’t got the energy. “It’s practically medical. It doesn’t count.”

Guy reaches out to him, gently rubs the back of his neck, and the touch of his skin in a non-violent context is so strange that the last bit of fight in him just flows out of him along his fingertips.

He makes a small sound of protest when Guy leaves, but mostly he just stays slumped over and follows the first light splatter of rain as it maps veins in the windows. When he comes back he lets himself be taken out of the car. Guy puts a hand on his shoulder and steers him along in front of him.

“They only had one room.”

“We sharing?”

“Two queens.”

He’s too tired to express any kind of response to this.

That first night, he falls asleep instantly, the TV flickering on mute in the background and the sky beginning to change to a lighter blue outside.

*

He wakes up first. On the mornings he isn’t hung-over, military habits win out. Normally on the days home he just ignores it, rolls over and tries to get some shut-eye again, but he doesn’t want to be asleep when Guy wakes up.

 Guy’s still snoring, and he’s reminded once again of just how big he actually is. No, that isn’t accurate. He isn’t that much bigger than Hal – he’s just more sprawling, more clumsy, always thumping against the edges of whatever container he’s in and spilling out to take over every space. Guy Gardner, professional space-stealer.

He makes coffee on the crappy little kettle that’s in the room, because it only seems fair after yesterday. Even if Guy kind of kidnapped him, he at least woke him up a nice way. Nice-ish. Better than not having aspirin there. Then he leaves the cup by the bedside table and goes outside to see where they are.

They are literally in the middle of nowhere. Guy has quite possibly driven him to the end of the world. He isn’t even sure which state they’re in anymore, and there’s nothing that could give him a clue. There’s a rusty play-set on some depressed looking astroturf. There’s the obligatory empty kidney-shaped pool which seems to be the international sign for crap service. And beyond that there’s just the desert and the sky, so hot and bright that it hurts his eyes to look at. He stares at it anyway, forcing his eyes to focus for one, two, three seconds even as they start to hurt from the glare. He doesn’t know why. Maybe he wants to burn this moment into him so that when it inevitably comes and he’s left with nothing but a few minutes of power in the uncaring void of space he can find this light, this heat still seared into the back of his eyeballs.

Or maybe he’s just a fucking idiot.

He hears a crash and a lot of swearing, then Guy drags himself out onto the balcony next to him, sheets wrapped round his waist and coffee in hand.

“You’re still here, Jordan.”

He gestures to the blazing surroundings. “Where would I go?”

“You might have stolen my car.”

“Would I do that?”

Guy gives him a eyebrows-raised smirk. It’s meant to be playful, he knows. He also knows that he’s been getting on relatively well with Guy for nearly eight straight hours now (four of which he was asleep, but that’s irrelevant) and it’s high time one of them snapped.

“Seriously? You find me in the middle of one bad patch and now suddenly I’m reckless criminal trash in your eyes?”

He wants Guy to snap back. He wants a shouting match, then a punch in the stomach and a kick in the teeth, wants to punch him back right in the mouth until little beads of blood start to roll down his lips. He wants to end up bruised and bloody and so angry that he can’t feel anything else. And then he wants Guy to storm out and take his car and his stupid fucking sympathy and he wants to be alone.

Instead, Guy just rolls his eyes and drinks his coffee. “You’re one of the bravest man I know and blah de blah blah. Stop being such a fucking child.”

“In between the insults and stupid noises there, you accidently paid me a compliment.”

Guy gives him a half smile and knocks their shoulders together. The coffee splashes out of the cup and he hisses in pain, wringing his hands at the burn and dropping the mug off the balcony.

Hal watches him curse and lick the coffee off his fingers.

“You even going to check that didn’t hit anyone?”

Guy shrugs. “Are you? We’d have heard a shout.”

“It might be a child. They might be unconscious.”

“Who the fuck brings a child to a place like this?”

 _Who the fuck, child or no child, comes to a place like this of their own free will?_ Is what he wants to ask. But the answer is people like them, and he’d rather not start looking for what kind of people they are at the moment.

*

“There’s a hippie community near here,” says Guy, winding down the window – and of course the car doesn’t have buttons to put the windows down, it has those little levers you have to crank round, and he’s still trying to drive one handed so they’re wobbling about the road in a way that would worry Hal if he wasn’t so past caring.

“There’s a hippie community near everywhere. I’m fairly sure Kyle’s lived in a few.”

“This one’s kind of interesting, though. It’s not “peace and love”, it’s an effort to – sustainable architecture, ok?”

“Gee, maybe we could snapchat a few pictures to John.”

Guy rolls his eyes. “Look, I’m trying to think of a place to stop. We keep driving all day, we’re going to go insane.”

“Well I don’t know, stop in a café or something.”

“Don’t you want to see the good old US of A, Hal?”

“Seen it. Hey, what about here?”

There are three coffee-coloured houses in a little cluster round the road, and a gas station with a few filthy plastic tables outside under red-and-white striped umbrellas. The sign outside promises QUALITY FOOD AND BURGERS. COKE. SPRITE. LOCAL BEVEREGES.

“Looks real tasty, Jordan.”

“You want to see the real America?”

“No. I want to see the America that doesn’t give me food poisoning.”

He turns in anyway in a spray of gravel. A girl of maybe 23 runs out of the garage and stares at them wide-eyed as they get out of the car. He pulls out a grin at her, easy and practised, and she runs back inside again.

Guy laughs, harsh and rough. “Looks like your famed charm is failing you.”

“My famed charm is just taking a little time to have an effect.”

They sit, and the girl comes outside again and takes their order wordlessly, blushing at Hal’s gentle flirting. Guy kicks him under the table as she leaves.

“What?”

“Seriously. Poor girl’s just trying to do her job.”

“And I’m just trying to be friendly.”

“You’re bad at friendly. Stick to egoistical and brooding.”

“One of us has to play good cop.”

Guy raises an eyebrow. “If either of us count as good cop in any situation, then the poor bastard we’re dealing with is screwed.”

They eat in silence, partially because talking never goes well for either of them and this shitty café would be an awful place to be abandoned, and partly because Hal’s starving. He ate the biscuits in the motel room for breakfast, figuring he couldn’t stand the canteen with the seven-child families and the endless queue for the waffle machine.

When he looks up Guy has his fingers steepled under his chin and his food untouched. He’s just watching him.

He could say something snarky. But then Guy would react in the strangely subdued way he’s been acting and he’d be thrown off balance again. He figures it’s his turn to throw him off balance. So he puts down his burger and looks back instead.

Guy’s the one who breaks the silence in the end.

“You know, people always think it’s weird. The kid of an alcoholic running a bar.”

“But you don’t drink when you’re serving.”

“I don’t. And. And I check myself every fucking day. Every time I open a beer, every time I try out a few new drinks, I check myself and make sure that this is a reasonable amount to be drinking. That I’m not deluding myself. That having this drink won’t hurt anyone I love.”

He almost laughs. “Are you saying that I should find a reasonable amount of Valium to take?”

Guy huffs in irritation. “No. I’m trying to tell you a story, so be a good little Lantern and listen. Anyway, I spent my whole fucking life checking and checking and checking to make sure I wasn’t an alcoholic, and I never took drugs. And I was so goddam proud of myself. The first Gardner in three generations not to be an addict.”

He stops to drink, and Hal notes that he drinks like he does everything else – with almost cartoonish exaggeration, head thrown back and throat bobbing in his neck.

“Anyway, then I ended up $32 000 in debt. Nearly lost the bar.”

“What? Why?”

“Because I was a gambling addict.”

Guy’s face is – it’s utterly stripped, no emotion, no façade, just _Guy_ staring back at him, and he can feel himself begin to panic at the amount of trust that’s being placed in him here.

“Guy – “

“And I hadn’t even noticed I’d become one. And no one else knew because I’d been betting online.”

“Guy, please – “

He holds up his hands. “Ok. But what I’m trying to say is, what I said this morning about the car – “

“Forget it. I was just – I was just trying to start a fight. Forget it.”

It’s the briefest gesture, but Guy reaches out and brushes his fingers along the back of his hand and for a second he feels much older than he is, his lungs tight.

“I think it’s a thing you know,” he says after a while, when Hal’s breathing has evened enough for him to start eating his burger again. “Lanterns and addictions.”

He could just be talking about the two of them, but there’s something in the way he says it that sounds different. He looks up again. “Who else?”

Guy fixes him with a steady look. “You know I can’t tell you.”

“It’s Kyle.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I’ve met Kyle. I’ve met John.”

Guy shakes his head and turns away. “Don’t go digging, Hal.”

“Hell, you think I’m going to go start rooting through _someone else’s_ problems? A little busy here.”

Guy laughs. It’s nice to notice that Guy shakes when he laughs, and it’s a little strange to realise that he probably hasn’t made him laugh like this more than once or twice before. Normally what he gets is a derisive snort that sounds like it was forced out of him.

It’s good. It’s warm and it’s good.

*

“So I know we had our little talk on self-control today,” he says, rooting through the minibar, “but do you want to get drunk?”

Guy gives him a wary look from where he’s stretched out on his bed. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“Hey, I’ve been a good little pill popper and kept sober all day.”

“Whatever. I call dibs on the nice stuff.”

Which is fine by him, because really all he wants to do is get out of his skin and lift this heavy, awkward rawness that’s settled on his system. He throws Guy a mini bottle of JD and grabs a handful of them to set on the nightstand between the beds.

“So what do we do now?” says Guy.

“Now we lie around, get drunk and talk bitterly about our lives. Jeez, Guy, it’s like you’re out of practise at being a fuck-up or something.”

They’re on the second bottle of whisky, mock-arguing about something Guy maybe did one time or maybe didn’t and either way it shocked Kyle, when Guy says “So just to clarify, we’re not even going near the relationship-dissection territory, right?”

“Nope.”

“Good. Because I’m done with that bullshit. But seriously, I swear, it was Vath that said it, not me…” and they drift off again.

At the fourth bottle of whisky – and he’s very, very drunk now – Guy makes a crack about Carol and they both laugh until their sides hurt, and he gets up and stumbles across the gap between their beds to play-punch Guy and they end up wrestling on the bed, on hand on Guy’s chest holding him down (holding himself up?) and the other fending off the pillow attack he’s being hit with.

He collapses next to him. A small, sober-ish part of him is aware that they’re too close but Guy doesn’t seem to care, he just shuffles closer.

“You’re even uglier up close, Jordan.”

He raises his fingers to Guy’s lips – _Shhh –_ and Guy mirrors the action. But the fingers across his lips are hesitant, faltering, and on an instinct he presses his mouth to them. He heats Guy’s intake of breath, moves his mouth down his hand and kisses him on the baby-raw skin on the inside of his wrist. Guy moves his hands away, pushing Hal back.

“Hal, are you – I think we should go to sleep now.”

But the fingers of his other hand are still rubbing tentative circles on the muscles of Hal’s stomach, and then down across the curve of his hipbone, and when Hal pushes him back against the pillows and moves his mouth to his collarbone, peppering it with bites, Guy bites his lip until the barest hiss of a sound escapes him. Hal knows he’s making a mistake, sure as anything, but Guy’s eyes are ragged holes in his face and his expression is so hopeful it hurts, and he just can’t bring himself to care.

*

Hal knows two things – that in the end everything will be lost to him and that he will continue anyway. Fear and will. Since his dad, then his brothers, then his mum, then Barry and then the endless rounds of losing Carol, he’s learnt to spread his emotions thin. Never feel too much, and never feel anything you can’t justify.

Guy, he knew, was the opposite. His feelings were painted in broad, clumsy brushstrokes. During that whole Krona mess, when they’d all been stripped down to the bone, he’d found love and rage worked best for him – powerful emotions, but unstable and desperate and both reeking of caring too much. He was huge and brash and full of rage, but he was also – when looked at in that light – terrifyingly vulnerable.

He’s still sleeping, the covers thrown haphazardly over him. Hal sits on the edge of the other bed in his boxers and thinks. A part of him is cold and wants to put on some clothes. A part of him is hungover as fuck and demanding coffee and pointing out that if he lay backwards he could stop the sun from hurting his eyes. Most of him is just filled with a heavy apathy that seems to override all physical sensations to the point where he can’t bring himself to move.

None of him feels very concerned with fixing the Guy problem.

He could always call his ring and fly out of here, of course. He’s only got one suitcase. Leave a note telling Guy he’ll pay him back and then act like it never happened. Maybe he can go stay with Ollie for a few days, or crash on Barry’s couch.  John would probably take him in if he asked. Kyle would always be happy to see him in a way that was equal parts touching and painful.

It’s the right choice, and it’s the choice that will be easier on them both. But it’s also the cowards choice, and he isn’t sure he can take that, particularly not when he’s trying to convince himself he can be brave on earth too, and particularly not in front of Guy.

Which leaves the last choice.

He stands and crosses the room, trying to make as little noise as possible. Reaches into his left jacket pocket, where he knows he left the little container with the last of his stash.

Right pocket. Nothing. Jeans. Nothing.

He’s rifling through his bag desperately, throwing clothes on the floor, when he feels hands close around his wrist. Guy pulls him back from the bag and holds him against him, his head on his shoulder and his arms around his chest until it feels like he’s surrounded by him.

“Hal.”

He swallows. “My mouth is dry,” he says, because it’s the truth.

Guy pulls away slightly, and he panics, but a second later he’s back with one of the bottles of water from the welcome tray. Hal drinks it still cradled against his chest.

“Dry mouth’s one of the side effects, you know that?”

“Do now.”

He leans back into Guy because he can hold him up.

*

“Huh. Irritability,”

Guy picked him up a leaflet on the effects of Valium withdrawal from the pharmacist while Hal stood outside and threw up what little he’d had of his breakfast. Radio’s all evangelical ministers, which Guy can’t bear to listen to, so instead Hal reads out the symptoms and they try and see if they’ve checked it off.

“To be honest, Jordan, I think it would be difficult to tell.”

“Ha ha, funny guy. There’s aggressiveness in here too. When does irritability tip over into aggressiveness?”

“I think aggressiveness is where you try and start the fight and irritability is where you think I’m trying to start the fight. What else?”

“Tremors, muscle cramps, nothing that won’t probably go away.”

Guy looks at him in the rear-view mirror. “You’re a terrible liar, Jordan.”

His mouth twists, and he tries to keep his voice even. “I don’t know, Guy. There’s a lot of scary stuff in here. Psychosis, hallucinations, _status epilepticus.”_

“None of which are the things you’re worried about.”

He sighs, and traces the two little lines at the bottom of the page with his finger. “Anxiety. Panic disorder.”

Guy nods, but doesn’t say anything, and they drive on in silence.

“Tell me about quitting gambling,” says Hal, because there’s a crawling need under his skin and he needs to be distracted.

“Well, you know what they say. Admitting you have a problem is step one.” He shoots Hal a sharp look over the dashboard, which he chooses to ignore. “But it’s not just admitting you have a problem, it’s… it’s admitting you have lost control of your life. Which is hard.”

“What’s step 2?”

“Believing a power greater than ourselves could restore our sanity.”

“Bet that went down well.”

“Yep. Step 3 is turning our lives over to him, which I…”

“Skipped?”

“Kinda, yeah. Tora prayed for me. Then you make a “searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” So I got kind of drunk and wrote out everything that was wrong with me in long one night.”

“Can you send a copy to me? I want to make sure that I’m really picking up on everything.”

“Hey, there’s the irritability, right on time.”

Hal punched him on the shoulder. “Asshole. What was the hardest part?”

“You’re meant to write to everyone you wronged through your addiction apologising for wronging them.”

“Who’d you write to?”

“Well, I didn’t exactly want to send a heartfelt letter to my bank manager, so I wrote to…” His voice falters. “I wrote a pretty long letter to Tora. Except it stopped being just about my addiction and ended up being a grovelling apology for my entire personality. I sent it anyway, because I didn’t want to write it again. But she was the only one I’d wronged, because she was the only one I’d been taking money from.”

There’s that sharp look again, and this time Hal holds it. “I don’t know how many people I’d have to write to.”

“You don’t have to quit like that.”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. Doesn’t sound like the worst of ideas.”

Guy steers them down some little dusty track, and he doesn’t ask where they’re going. Hell, he doesn’t know where their final destination is, so why worry about a few pit stops?

That seems like it should be a metaphor for something, but he’s never been a deep guy and he’s tired as shit.

“Carol,” says Guy.

“Obviously.”

“All those people who spent weeks calling to check you were ok.”

“I’m not writing about my fucking addiction to Batman, thank you very much.”

“All right, the ones you think actually cared then.”

He remembers Barry the last time he saw him, his face scrunched up and full of hurt and empathy and anger. Imagines Ollie and Dinah getting their twin letters over breakfast, stealing food off each other’s plates as they touch arms and compare notes. “Did you know…?” “No, I never knew…” Carol, sighing and tearing up and adding it to the long, mental list of Reasons to Stay Away from Hal Jordan.

He’d probably honestly rather write to Batman.

They pull over near the side of huge rock formation with a wide, flat top. The sun’s going down, and the darker sandstone veins that run up and down the side look like they’re bleeding in the light. They climb to the top, yelling down insults and encouragement whenever they overtake the other, laughing and scrabbling, By the time Guy pulls him up onto the hot sandstone top he can feel the bruises start to blossom on his arms, and they hurt but they’re a feeling.

They sit together, watching the sunset and making jokes about the old days, and when Guy throws a companionable arm over his shoulder and it stays he doesn’t shrug it off, just leans in closer.

“Fuck,” Guy says after a while.

“What?”

“I left the picnic in the car. You hungry?”

“I’m too nauseous to eat. You?”

“I kept my lunch down. I think I’ll be fine.”

The last rays of light filter out over the desert. Between the rocks below him, Hal thinks he sees a rattlesnake move, but maybe it’s just the cells at the back of his eye.

“So,” says Guy. “Anxiety, huh?”

He closes his eyes and rolls his head back. “Don’t.”

“It’ll pass. You’ll move past it. The corps won’t – “

“The corps will do whatever’s best for the corps. Guy, the last time I got scared – how many people died the last time I started living in fear?”

Guy’s voice is scratchy and warm against his ear. “Yeah, but you won. And you’re going to win again.”

He kisses him then, and Guy kisses back, trusting and pliable, and he’s so easy to hurt now that he almost wants to, just to prove to him that you shouldn’t start caring about fucked up things. But he just keeps kissing him instead, hands moving to pull his t-shirt over his head. Guy pushes his arms up and Hal bits his lip and looks at him, traces the scars he’s still got on his chest from his Warrior days.

“You,” he says, and goes to move his mouth down to Guy’s neck, scarred and sunburnt and taught, but he pushes him back with a hand on his forehead.

“Me what?”

“I’d have to write to you too.”

“You didn’t wrong me. I drove all the way out to the desert to pick you up. Sure, you were cranky, but who wouldn’t be?”

And what hurts, what really hurts, is that Guy believes everything he says. Hal doesn’t know how to say _sorry_ or _I’m such a fuck-up_ or _you were right, you were always the best_ or _thank you,_ so he just lowers his head again, traces the planes of his body with his lips and forces himself to promise that he’ll stay clean.

*

They drive. They stop. They fuck. Guy has frequent, screaming rows with gas station attendants over the smallest things, and Hal can’t help but feel guilty because this is what **it** takes for Guy not to blow up at him. If the situations were reversed, what would he have done?

If he’s honest, he wouldn’t even have bothered checking up. He wouldn’t have given a fuck. Pill addiction? Just another colourful detail in the life of Guy Gardner, professional loser.

He tells Guy this in a moment of complete honesty after he’s finished blowing him under the most mind-blowing stars he’s ever seen.

“You know, before all this – I wouldn’t have done the same to you.”

Guy leans down and kisses him, which he takes as _I know, you asshole, and I forgive you._

Guy is really good at becoming suddenly, uncharacteristically indirect at exactly the right moments.

He still doesn’t know where they’re going until one day – radio, finally, playing something they both like, a song he can’t remember except for the whistling but in the chorus that they both join in with, enthusiastically and out of tune – he sees the California sign..

“Jesus fuck, Guy.”

“What?”

“Are you taking me to Coast City?”

Guy snorts, but it sounds mirthless. “Said I was taking you home, didn’t I? You want to go stay with GA for a bit, it’s not too late. I can swing around and head for Star.”

“Yeah, but – I don’t have a house in Coast City.”

“Do you have a house anywhere else that I should be taking you?”

That shuts him down. He punches Guy on the shoulder, though, just to let him know that he’s not happy.

“So where are you going to drop me off?”

“I don’t know. Where’s your brother live?”

“A flat. A very, very small flat.”

“What about Ferris air? What about Carol?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

Guy rolls his eyes. “Come on. This kind of thing must have happened to you before. Where did you stay then?”

“I slept in my car.”

“Where’s your car?”

 “It got repod. Look, just take me – “ He sighs and collapses against the dashboard again, head in hands. He’s been doing that a lot recently. Any longer and he’d probably leave an indentation, a mark for Guy to point out to future passengers – “And here is where Earth’s mightiest Green Lantern collapsed every day while wondering what the fuck to do with his life.”.

“You could always go to rehab,” says Guy. “They have some pretty good programs in – “

“What the fuck makes you think I’ve got the money for rehab?”

And that’s when whatever last fragile thread that was keeping Guy patient snaps and he spins over to the side of the road.

“Get out of the car.”

He gets out, because fuck Gardner, he’s hitchhiked before and he’ll do it again. But Guy gets out too and stalks round to where he is. His face is all curled up in on itself, his mouth snarling. He’d almost forgotten Gardner getting angry.

“You absolute asshole,” he says, his voice low and dark.

Apologizing now would just push this explosion down for another time, and there’s nothing he can reasonably say back, so Hal scuffs his shoes on the ground and says nothing.

“How many times have I come through for you?” says Guy. “Fuck it – how many times has everyone come through for you? How many fucking second chances do you get, Hal? Is it – are you testing? Are you trying to see when we’ll all finally see you for the human garbage that you are?”

He pushes a hand through his hair – it’s nearly brown under sodium lights, Hal knows, but at sunsets it looks almost alive with red – and pulls on it, hard, like that short shock of pain can keep him inside his skin. “Do you ever realise how fucking unfair it is? Do you ever realise what a god damn charmed life you lead? Carol comes back to you every damn time and gives you a job and a home and love, while everyone Kyle touches dies. You can go off book and fuck around and ignore the Guardians and everyone will raise you up like a goddam golden boy, while John will get shunned and dragged of in chains. The whole goddam Justice League will love you and praise you even after you turn sides and treat them like shit for years, and yet they see me, and they – “He chokes, and violently turned away from him.

Hal reaches out and lets his fingers ghost along the side of Guy’s arm. Guy’s almost crying from frustration, eyes puffy and sore looking.

“What are you trying to say, Guy?”

He strokes his throat with his hand, like he’s trying to cover himself from Hal. “You want an inspirational message? Fine: the world give up on you, that’s been proven, so stop giving up on yourself. You want the real message? You’re an asshole, Hal Jordan.”

“No punching?”

Guy’s face splits in a smile, but it doesn’t look like there’s anything behind it. “I figured you were probably angling for it, you masochistic fucker.”

“I’m masochistic? You drove all the way into the desert to pick me up.”

“Yeah, well.” Guy rubs at his eyes. “I was going to ask you to stay with me, actually. But I thought you’d say no.”

“Are you still offering?”

“Now? No. Now I’m mad at you.”

“Ok.”

“You know that isn’t going to stick, though.”

“Ok.”

“Stop saying “ok”, you fucker.” Guy puts a hand out on Hal’s shoulder and digs his fingers in, still half buckled-over and gasping as he tries to get his mouth under control.

Hal shuts his eyes. “Why do you keep doing this for me?”

“Why does Sinestro keep asking you to join him even though he knows you’ll never say yes? Why does Carol keep taking you back?”

“Guy – “

“Just – just fuck off for a second. Take a walk or something.”

He walks away to the other side of the car and leans against it, watching everyone else whizz past him on the highway. Guy comes round and stands next to him, hands braced on the roof and staring in the opposite direction.

“You want to go home now?” he says. His voice is barely a whisper.

Hal swallows. “Where do you mean?”

“I don’t… I don’t know, Hal. Pick a destination. Somewhere I can take you.”

“Baltimore’s a long way away,” he says. He means it casually, but his voice is breaking apart, and he digs his fingers into the door handle to give him some stability.

“I should buy some CD’s,” says Guy. “Sick of listening to the radio.”

“It’s ok?”

Guy snorts. “What the hell. We’ll probably get called away to deal with some form of shiny space terrorist before we even get there.”

“Can I drive?”

“No, muscle spasms, you cannot drive.” He turns to open the car door, and then suddenly he pulls Hal close, head in his shoulders and arms around his neck.

*

They almost make it to Baltimore. They probably would have got there if they hadn’t found that surprisingly nice place along the way, the one with the beautiful view of forest for miles and the aqua blue pool, and just stayed in bed for days. It had seemed like a miracle at the time – Hal, wracked with panic suddenly, had demanded they pull over right then because _Guy wasn’t paying attention because he was humming and they were going to crash immediately._ Guy had checked them in while Hal threw up (ninth time in four days, and wasn’t being a superhero glamorous?) and afterwards, once he had stopped staring in the bathroom mirror watching the tears roll down his face while he tried to work out why he was crying, he’d realised that this was probably the nicest place they’d stayed in months.

(He got over Guy seeing him cry very, very quickly).

The call comes through in the middle of the night, but they’re still awake, not touching except for their tangled legs while they watch bad telenovelas with the sound turned low, Guy narrating and Hal feeling like he’s going to burst out of his skin from laughter. They listen to Salaak, Hal nodding curtly and Guy suddenly grim and serious, and when it switches off he reaches for his ring without even thinking. He’s in uniform before he catches Guy looking at him.

“Stop it.”

“Stop what.”

“ _It._ I might be a wreck sometimes, but there are only three things that make Hal Jordan scared, and certain death is not one of them.”

“Three things.”

“Yes.”

“What three things?”

“ – I don’t know, I was guessing, it was an approximation.”

“And you guessed three.”

“I don’t know. Maybe five. Maybe seven. A small number. One digit. Put your fucking ring on.”

“You could sit this one out and – “

Hal kisses him, because Guy is sweet (since _when?)_ and telling him that talking about how he could have a panic attack in the dark vastness of space and maybe lose his ring and die is not improving his chances of not having said panic attack seems almost mean.

“Are you ready to go, Gardner?”

“Sure I am. I’m waiting for your slow ass.”

“Let’s see how slow I am when I beat you to Oa,” he says, and he takes off, green against black, one spark following another.


End file.
